Venatu Recruitment Group are leading the charge to transform the offsite recruitment landscape. James Shepherd, Divisional Manager, shares his insights into the challenges for 2022.
With six UK locations, and plans to develop further throughout 2022, our MMC team are ideally placed to service key players within the industry. Supporting the growth of many recognised industry leaders, we have become specialists with an in-depth knowledge of the offsite and modern methods of construction (MMC) sectors.
I have an overwhelming enthusiasm for the offsite market and have a few observations about this growing sector.
As an industry the offsite sector is creating jobs and environmentally friendly, sustainable solutions to enhance the UK construction economy, with the modular housing sector alone growing by 6% in 2021. Long gone are the days, and opinions, that modular build is less robust that traditional build methods and we now see some very high quality and energy efficient projects making their way to market. Having worked in the construction and offsite sectors for most of my career, I have experienced the growth in demand for both temporary and permanent staffing as the sector expands. Bringing with it several challenges, particularly in an industry that was already facing skills shortages – which have only worsened following the recent pandemic.
With the sector’s ongoing growth we need to attract new talent, but prospective employers need to keep an open mind and embrace flexible thinking during their recruitment processes to enable them to consider other industries, including manufacturing, engineering and construction, where skillsets can be transferable.
In addition to the traditional commercial and production-based roles, we are seeing the growth of recruitment in areas that include logistics, digital marketing and technology driven roles. However, the biggest increase, and a priority growth area for Venatu, is the provision of temporary production staff.
We have doubled the number of consultants we have focusing in this area, as well as within our backoffice support and payroll functions. The recruitment of temporary staff to support several of our clients has allowed us to contribute to their ongoing growth. By enabling the opening of additional offsite manufacturing factories and increasing staffing levels to operate second shifts, we have contributed to the increase of productivity and output within the sector.
With the recent appointment of three industry leaders to the £600million framework, set up by the National Housing Federation, the recruitment and skills shortage looks set to continue.
If you need any support with the growth of your existing workforce, me and my team are ready to assist with all your recruitment needs.
For more information visit: www.venatu.co.uk
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